Ahmed Quraishi and Flood Contributions

Ahmed Quraishi’s latest blog post for Express Tribune (why are they giving this discredited conspiracy theorist a platform?) is either a c-grade comedy routine or further evidence that Ahmed Quraishi is willing to ignore facts when they are inconvenient to his political agenda.

Ahmed Quraishi, by his own admission, is a political consultant who is “not a journalist anymore” and supports the jihadis. In short, he is a propagandist. So perhaps it should be no surprise that his blog post today accuses Pakistan’s “rich political elite” of “refusing to budge” and donate to flood relief, except that this claim is so easily demonstrated to be false, we wonder why he even bothered to write it.

According to Ahmed Quraishi,

The Pakistan Army donated one day’s salary of its soldiers, who mostly come from poor backfgrounds, for the relief effort. No politician is yet to take a similar step.

Ahmed admits in his post that President Zardari has personally donated Rs.6 Millions and the Sharif family has donated Rs.10 Millions to relief funds. His complaint there is both the old “do more” line with the added insult of insinuating corruption by saying that “no one knows how this amount will be spent”.

Ahmed then goes on to condemn MNAs and MPAs both because they have not “been seen in the affected areas helping people or distributing aid”, and for being “shameless politicians …quick to jump in front of visiting TV crews”. Typical Ahmed Quraishi – you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t also!

Ahmed Quraishi’s column is embarrassing for the author as well as the Express Tribune that agreed to publish it. It is based on easily disproven misinformation and scandalous insults backed by no evidence whatsoever.

This leaves only one question. How much, pray tell, has Ahmed Quraishi done to help?